Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | gpt-oss-20b (low) | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0.07 | $0.06 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $0.2 | $0.2 |
Verdict. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning takes the aggregate benchmark matchup 2–0 across 2 categories. Real workloads usually care about a handful of specific tasks — see the per-benchmark table above.
Pricing. Both models sit in the budget bracket for output-token pricing. At 1.0× the per-million-token cost, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). Nemotron 3.5 Lightning makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. gpt-oss-20b (low) is strongest on Intelligence Index (10.0). Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads on Coding Index (26.8), Intelligence Index (13.6).
Speed. Throughput is comparable — 281 tok/s vs 302 tok/s — so generation speed shouldn't drive your choice here. Look at the per-benchmark wins instead.
Provider. OpenAI and NVIDIA sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: OpenAI tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while NVIDIA often prices more aggressively. Your existing vendor relationships, billing, and SLA preferences may matter as much as the raw numbers above.
Workload cost. Workload scenarios (per million requests at 30M input + 15M output tokens): gpt-oss-20b (low) costs $5.10 ($61/year); Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs $4.80 ($58/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): gpt-oss-20b (low) ≈ $0.75/run, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning ≈ $0.70/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): gpt-oss-20b (low) ≈ $34/run, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning ≈ $32/run. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning becomes more attractive at higher volume — the absolute per-token pricing difference compounds when you ship at scale.
Recommendation. Both models have legitimate use cases — the right answer depends on whether you are optimizing for benchmark ceiling, latency, or unit cost. Start with the cheaper / faster model, evaluate against your specific task, and only switch if the upgrade shows a meaningful lift.
Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.10/M tokens vs $0.10/M for gpt-oss-20b (low).
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning wins 2 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 0 for gpt-oss-20b (low). See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning generates tokens faster at 302 tok/s vs 281 tok/s. However, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has lower time-to-first-token (0.57s vs 0.85s).
Choose based on your priorities: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning for lower cost, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning for stronger benchmark performance, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.